


3am

by ananbeth



Series: 30 days of prompts [5]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, F/M, Meet-Cute, this is duuuuumb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:55:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24337009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ananbeth/pseuds/ananbeth
Summary: Annabeth meets her new neighbour and he is..... very cute.[mad]
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Series: 30 days of prompts [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/778182
Comments: 11
Kudos: 258





	3am

**Author's Note:**

> full disclosure, this was posted on my tumblr ages ago but i wanted to put it on here too so apologies o those who have already read it lol

Annabeth’s resolve is set right up until he opens the door. She will murder him, her neighbour. Her mysterious neighbour who she hasn’t met yet because he moved in last week and decided to wake her up at three o'clock in the morning. She’s not sure what he’s doing but it sounds like he’s trying to break down the walls separating their apartments. She can only tell it’s a guy because the banging around is accompanied some quite inventive cursing in a deep voice.

She has a meeting in the morning, and she struggles to stay awake during those at the best of times, never mind after having being kept awake into the early hours of the morning.

The door opens, revealing a guy a few inches taller than her wearing a blue Henley shirt, jeans, and the messiest nest of black hair she’s ever seen. He looks pissed off, but when his eyes settle on her his expression softens to surprise. His gaze drops down her frame briefly before finding her face again and Annabeth curses herself for not changing before storming over here. She’s in her pyjama shorts and a sweater. She’s not even wearing a bra. Fuck.

“Hello,” the guy says.

Annabeth clears her throat. “Hi. I, um…I’m from next door.”

“Oh!” He smiles and holds out a hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Percy.”

She shakes his hand, noticing how calloused his skin his is. He must work with his hands for a living. “Annabeth.”

“Cool. So what brings you round?”

“Um.” Annabeth runs a hand through her hair. “You’re uh, building something?”

His eyebrows furrow. “Yeah, I am. Oh shit.” Comprehension dawns visibly on his face. “Was I that loud?”

“Just a little. You know…epicly.”

Percy tugs a hand through his hair, sending it even more wayward. “God, I’m so sorry. I just…I moved in last week and I still don’t have any furniture up.”

“It couldn’t wait til morning?”

“My mom’s coming to visit. I wanted to make it look like I have my life together a little bit.”

“Right. How’s that going for you?”

“Well, it’s three o’clock in the morning, I’m building Ikea furniture without any instructions because my dog ate them, the only thing I have in my fridge is a block of cheese and a six pack of beer, and now the only neighbour I have met hates me because I woke her up trying to build my bed.”

Annabeth raises her eyebrows, noticing the spread of blush over his cheekbones. “I don’t hate you,” she tells him.

He looks down at her. “You don’t?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

She could leave now, and let him struggle alone while she gets some sleep before tomorrow. They could be on okay terms and he’ll probably be awkward around her because he still feels guilty and, if she’s really honest with herself, she’ll be feeling guilty too. Because right now all she sees is a damsel in distress, and her hero complex isn’t quite so small to walk away right now.

“Do you want hand?” she asks him.

Percy’s eyebrows pull up. “Really?”

Annabeth shrugs. “You don’t seem to be getting on too well by yourself. No offence.”

“None taken.” He steps aside and opened to door wider. “Come on in.”

Leaving all sense behind, Annabeth walks past him into the apartment and stops dead in her tracks. The apartment has the same layout as hers; open plan kitchen and living area with two doors going off into the bedroom and bathroom at the opposite end to which she is standing. Annabeth’s kitchen is decorated simply, with a small round table and wooden chairs and metallic appliances. Her living room has a matching couch and armchairs and a reading nook with a large lamp next to the window.

Percy’s apartment is desolate. The floor is littered with half-built units and torn packaging. There’s a TV on the floor against the wall and a couch without any cushions on it, in the kitchen is a table with two chairs around it and a few appliances which have clearly not been bought together. Annabeth, who likes order and unity, is out of her comfort zone.

“It’s…you have a bean bag chair.”

Behind her, Percy laughs nervously. “I’ve always wanted a bean bag chair.”

She turns around so that she can give him a look. He’s rubbing the back of his neck and avoiding her gaze and Annabeth takes a moment to appreciate quite how cute he is. Not just cute, but hot. His jeans are slung low on his hips, and the way his arm is lifted pulls up the hem of his shirt and lets her glimpse at the V of his hips and the line of hair disappearing into his boxers. He is carelessly attractive, like he has no idea how cute he is; how enticing the curve of muscles against his shirt sleeve are, or how the messy tangle of his hair makes Annabeth want to weave her fingers through it and pull.

“So, do you want coffee? A coffee pot is one of the few things I have.”

“Um.” Annabeth blinks, hoping he hadn’t noticed her gawping at him. “Sure. I guess we’ll be needing it.”

A scratching noise draws Annabeth’s attention to the closed bedroom door. “What–?”

Percy walks past her to the door. “Um, so I mentioned I have a dog…?”

“Yeah.”

His hand is on the doorknob, he’s wincing at her.

“I love dogs,” she tells him, and it’s not a lie, to ease his nerves.

He visibly relaxes. “Okay. Because she’s kind of intense.”

The corner of her mouth quirks into a smile. “Okay.”

“Right. So just, brace yourself.”

He opens the door and out bounds a blur of white and grey fur. She wines and jumps up at Percy and he catches her front legs on his thighs and scratches her neck and it’s the most adorable thing Annabeth has seen. After a moment, the dog spots Annabeth, who steps forwards and bends down on her knees.

“Her name is Betty,” Percy tells her as the dog hesitantly pads over to Annabeth.

“Hi Betty.” Annabeth scratches Betty behind her ears and soon she’s found a new best friend. She laughs as the dog climbs onto her lap and tries to lick her face.

Percy’s laugh joins her own and Annabeth looks up to see him standing above her with his arms crossed over her chest. “She’s usually pretty shy with strangers.“

Annabeth shrugs. “Dogs love me. She’s beautiful, what breed is she?”

“Border Collie. She’s a rescue; that’s why she’s usually so nervous around new people.”

“Where’d you rescue her from?”

Percy walks past her, moving into the kitchen to make coffee as Annabeth sits on the floor to fuss his dog. “Well, from work actually,” he starts. “I’m a firefighter and we pulled her out of a pile of rubble after a building collapsed. Unfortunately, her family didn’t make it. We kept her at the station for a while but she couldn’t stay there and I didn’t like the idea of her going to a shelter, so I adopted her.”

Annabeth looks down at the dog who is now staring back at her with one blue eye and one brown, and wonders what her family was like. Whether they were a young couple, or an old one, or a family with a young boy who doted on her, or a single woman who came home to her everyday.

“Here,” Percy hands her a cup of coffee, steaming and milky, just the way she likes it. “I hope you don’t take sugar because I don’t have any, but I found some milk in the fridge.”

“Next to the cheese?”

His smile is warm and Annabeth returns it with one of her own.

“So.” He looks away from her, at the mess around them. “We should get to work.”

Annabeth gives Betty one last scratch and clambers to her feet. “You’re a regular slavedriver.”

Percy’s smile turns a little wicked and Annabeth hides her shaky breath with a sip of her coffee.

* * *

"So I think I figured out why this leg is shorter than the others,” Annabeth says.

Percy looks up from the two torn pieces of paper which once acted as the instructions for this unbelievably complicated bed frame. His face rises from confusion to hope. “Oh yeah?”

Annabeth holds up two wooden legs, one substantially shorter than the other. “It’s for the bedside table.”

Percy grins. “Nice. Wait, where’s the other leg, then?”

“You got me. Maybe Betty ran off with it?”

“Don’t blame my dog.”

“Your dog is the reason we’re in this mess.”

He frowns. “She chews things when she’s feeling insecure.”

“Why was your dog feeling insecure?”

“She ate a double breakfast and was feeling chubby.”

Annabeth snorts. “You’re a dork.”

He nods. “This is true.” He puts down the instructions and pulls himself upright, groaning as he goes. “Lemme find that leg. I’ll get back to you.”

“Sure thing.”

It’s five thirty am and they’ve successfully assembled a coffee table, a TV stand, a chest of drawers, and a couch. Annabeth is impressed with them both. They have been a far more effective team than Annabeth and her old roommate, or her best friend, or her ex-boyfriend had been when it came to building furniture. This may be partially down to the four beers they’ve managed to drink together, but Annabeth just thinks that part of it is that Percy is just so easy to get on with.

“Found it!”

Annabeth cheers and takes another swing of her drink.

“Where was it?” she asks as he re-enters the room.

He lowers himself back on the floor, looking sheepish. “Betty’s basket.”

Annabeth takes the leg from him, rolling her eyes. “Unbelievable.”

She finishes assembling the bed and Percy helps her slot the wooden slats in place before they dump the already made up mattress on top. Then there’s a bed, with blue quilted sheets and pillows. All of Annabeth’s drowsiness comes pouring back into her body, filling it with lead, as she stares at the comfortable-looking throw which Percy’s mom must have knitted for him.

Then Percy falls onto it, still fully clothed on top of the covers and Annabeth has absolutely no restraint left in her body not to fall down next to him. So she does. And good god, it’s a comfortable bed.

“Damn,” she mutters, hearing how sleepy she sounds, “we built a good bed.”

Next to her, Percy laughs, causing the bed to shake under her and it feels like such an intimate thing to Annabeth. But she still doesn’t move away. Instead, she lets the quiet sounds of the apartment wash over her, so similar and so different to her own. The ticking clock in the kitchen, the hum of the boiler, the gentle pad of paws on wooden floors, the everlasting street noise on the other side of the window.

It’s a lullaby to her tired mind, just like the breaths next to her which steadily morph into gentle snores. Annabeth is swept under by her exhaustion, and she lets it take her, like a tide washing her to shore.

* * *

Annabeth wakes up with a headache and an aching shoulder. There’s an insistent beeping coming from somewhere and her attention is drawn solely to finding the source of it and making it stop. She fumbles around, her hand sliding across warm bed sheets until it closes around her cell phone. She presses the screen blindly until the sound shuts off and then falls back against the pillow with a groan. Which is closely followed by another, deeper groan on the other side of the bed.

Except it’s not the other side of the bed because it’s right next to her. He. He is right next to her, on his back with one arm thrown over his face and a trail of drool coming from the corner of his mouth.

Annabeth realises in horror that only a few seconds earlier, she had been pressed up against him, head on his shoulder, arm tucked around his waist like they’d spent a lifetime sharing a bed. But they haven’t. She only met him four hours ago and now she knows that he has a dog named Betty and a red toothbrush and blue quilted sheets and he drools in his sleep, and these are all things which are far too intimate for her to know.

Before she can make another move, Percy’s arm falls away from his face and he’s blinking blearily, rubbing his eyes like a child. Then he clocks her and goes still.

“Oh…hi.”

Annabeth sits up. “Hi.”

“I guess we fell asleep.”

“You’re very observant in the mornings aren’t you?”

Percy sits up too, wiping his chin and giving her a look. “It’s early. Be nice.”

Annabeth takes a moment to look him over. Crease marks on his cheeks, bed hair all over the place, sleep in his blinking eyes. He looks adorable and Annabeth wants to wrap herself up with him. She wants to crawl under the covers with him and ask about every detail of his life; why did he become a firefighter, what’s his mother like, does he have any siblings, what’s his favourite food? She wants to know every detail, and she wants to press her toes against his as he tells her.

“You okay?” he asks her and she jumps a little.

She looks down at her phone, realising now that she had been staring at him. “Yeah. I’m– oh my god!”

“What?”

“I have to go to work.”

She scrambles off the bed, almost falling over as she gets her legs tangled in the blankets. Percy follows her, lifting a steadying hand as he balances himself. Betty appears then, wagging her tail and sniffing at Percy like he might produce some treats from his pockets.

“I’m fine,” Annabeth tells him. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“No, it’s fine! I mean, it’s… I don’t mind.”

He looks flustered and runs a nervous hand through his hair.

“Right.” She smiles. “Well I should go anyway. I need to shower.”

Percy gulps then and she bites her lip to hold back a smile.

“Sure, of course.” Percy rubs the back of his neck. “I’ll show you out.”

Betty follows them to the door which Percy opens. 

“Well, thanks for your help last night,” he says.

“I hope your mom likes it.”

“Oh, she’ll be happy that I’m not living in squalor.”

Annabeth laughs, edging out the door but feeling as though there’s a physical tie holding her close to him.

But she really does have to go.

“Anytime. You know where I am.”

He looks hopeful. “Yeah. Ditto.”

Annabeth smiles at him, and his returning grin sets her heart beating a little faster in her chest. She backs away, glancing over her shoulder as she opens her door to find him still standing there, giving her an awkward wave.

She walks into her apartment and closes the door, backing up against it immediately. Her head falls back against the wood and a smile devours her face as she thinks about reasons to knock on his door again.


End file.
